The Vanishing of Ethan Carter unveiled by ex-Bulletstorm devs

A group of key ex-People Can Fly developers, who worked on Bulletstorm, Painkiller, and the upcoming Gears of War: Judgment, have announced The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, the PC-exclusive first title of new indie studio The Astronauts.

Unlike the team's action-heavy previous works, however, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a digital PC adventure billed as a "weird fiction horror game" which should be "played at night, alone, and in headphones."

In The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, players take the role of a detective with supernatural powers who heads to the mountains in an attempt to track down a missing boy. The game will require players to make use of the protagonist's detective and paranormal abilities to unravel the mystery behind a trail of bodies.

"What we care about the most is that the players feel like they’re really there. Immersion is our number one priority," said designer Adrian Chmielarz in a statement.

"It's a game about exploration and discovery," Chmielarz adds. "We're not abandoning the gameplay--on the contrary: we're trying to strip it down to the bone and make sure it's always meaningful and truly makes the experience better."

The game is being developed with the "latest version" of Unreal Engine 3 alongside "exciting new technology" that will be revealed in the next few months. As part of the announcement, a brief teaser trailer and a screenshot were released.

No specific release date in 2013 was given by The Astronauts for The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

Polish-based development team The Astronauts was founded in 2012 by Chmielarz, Andrzej Poznanski, and Michal Kosieradzki, the original three founders of People Can Fly.

God rays! God rays everywhere!... I used to LOVE those things but they're getting a bit overused.

(By the way, I'm very interested in this kind of game. Priority to storytelling instead of blowing things up seems bound to failure in the eyes of the general market, but it's such a nice ethical choice)

Not very interested in adventure games (although perhaps it's just a game that is an adventure, lol), but I like survival horror games and Patrick Galloway from Clive Barker's Undying was also an investigator with paranormal abilities. I see no similarities otherwise, but it's enough to get my interest.

@Blade_Runner22 - Depends on the budget and the marketing. Bioshock was very much that way and it was immensely successful. Atlus has made a more niche market but has been successful with games like 999, Catherine, Zero's Escape and other story based games. You're right though that the CoD market will probably ignore this and that's totally fine :)

@Ratatoskr321@Blade_Runner22 Remember production costs are MUCH less in Poland (compared to most of Europe and NA) so these guys won't need to sell 5+ million copies to see financial sucess, which is terrific!